Relationship on rocks

[Sunkist83]

I have bee in a serious relationship for the last year and a half and just now my signaficant other has brough up some things that have really shaken the boat quite a bit. First off some background:

We went to the same college where we met, but I am older than her and just graduated. I have been away from her for the last 5 months at home and now that she is back at school and I am not she is really struggling emotionally without me. Plus I will be working in a different state for at least a year which makes the long distance thing even worse. Usually she is okay with the long distance since every summer I go away to work at an internship far away and she can handle it. But since I am not at school where we usually hang out all the time its rough for her.

I'm going to be visiting her next week for a little bit and we willl talk about our future more in depth then. She has already expressed the idea that she isn't sure what she wants in life. She is curious as to what other relationships are like, and what other guys are like. And she doesn't want to go through w/ the whole long distance thing if we might break up later.

My question is this:

1. How do you know if someone is "right" for you? We make an awesome couple and I want to try to convince her that it can work. I mean is there exercises you can do to figure this out? I don't want to sound arrogant but I am a pretty good guy and even though she might be able to find similar guys like me why waste the good things we have if we are so compatible?

Man I just don't know what to tell her.

[WallyLlama]

I'll try to give a short answer (and will probably fail LOL) to what could be a big question. It's got a lot to do with love and what you BOTH want. I think most people get it backwards... they seem to think you're supposed to decide if your compatible before you decide you are in love... or that somehow being compatible "proves" you are in love.

Here's the real deal: no two people will ever be fully compatible all the time... and given we change throughout our entire lives the person we decide to be with today is not the person we will be with 5 years from now... or, as you have discovered, five months from now.

So the over-simplified question is this: do we love each other enough to work at staying compatible? Can we manage our relationship (and do we want to manage it) so that there's enough flexibility, enough give and take... and probably a thousand other things... to create a third entity: us. Ultimately that is the big one. A lot of stuff gets "smaller" when you both agree that you share one BIG priority: loving each other and being happy together.

Another way of looking at it... you'll never find the perfect partner. You'll (hopefully) find somebody you love... and somebody who loves you... and then the two of you will spend the rest of your loves figuring out how to be perfect together, how to create that third entity. You don't lose your identity, you blend them. The example I've used in the past is: two matches, one flame.

If you find the person who you love so much that you almost aren't worried about how "right" they are, you are on the way... but it won't work unless they see the same in you. From your description... well, it doesn't sound like you are compatible, really. Does it?

It would be one thing if you both wanted to discover what you want from life together... that actually makes lots of sense, more than thinking you both already know and "match." But it sounds like she's saying she's not sure she wants you and the relationship. I don't think you are going to change that by trying to convince her. For that matter, I'm not sure you should.

Just remember, you can't lose what you never really had.